Back in September 2013, Frank Key posted on The Dabbler his idea of writing a book of very, very brief lives. Thanks in part to the enthusiastic reaction of the Dabbler audience and commenters, this idea has now become a reality, and Mr Key's Shorter Potted Brief, Brief Lives will ... Read More...
Oddities
In the concluding episode of his series about Phantom Libraries and unwritten books, Jonathan Law comes at last to Borges, monkeys and Babel... In all this talk of lost and phantom libraries there is one giant figure we have yet to consider, although his presence may have been felt hovering in the wings: the great ... Read More...
Rita returns to her ancestral Belgian homelands, and finds that the historical cities have succumbed to a plague of modern public art... Martin McDonagh’s film In Bruges opened the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and went on to become a cult hit. The story of hapless Irish hit men stuck in the ... Read More...
Continuing his series about Phantom Libraries and unwritten books, Jonathan Law explores the books that only exist in dreams, and wonders why he once encountered one called Manly Ways to Eat Fruit... There is something peculiarly painful about the idea of the lost or unwritten masterpiece – the great book that no one will read, ever, except ... Read More...
Continuing his mind-boggling tour of Phantom Libraries, Jonathan Law discovers that the books that Samuel Taylor Coleridge didn't write have a more powerful presence than the ones he did... Among the most tantalizing treasures of oblivion are the numerous phantom works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge – works promised to friends, family, ... Read More...
Having reviewed comical imaginary libraries from Swift to The Sims, Jonathan Law turns to stranger, more dreamlike worlds, for 'large are the treasures of oblivion'... So far, this has been mostly for laughs. The libraries invented by Rabelais, Donne, Joyce, and Swift were all uproarious things, even where the humour seemed to be laced with something ... Read More...
How should one best approach the gates of heaven? Frank receives a top tip from a US military man... Without wishing to be morbid, I have been wondering from time to time how I might conduct myself at the pearly gates of heaven when – far into the future, I hope ... Read More...
Nige recalls some vintage songs banned by the BBC - including some, like a ditty by Cliff Edwards - with good reason... Rattling around in my head, for reasons unknown, was one of Cole Porter's less famous songs, The Physician. This witty - and very catchy - commentary on scientific reductionism ... Read More...
Jonathan Law continues his exploration of that curious and very funny side-alley of literature: the library of non-existent books... Victorian literature has nothing to compare with the ribald, fantastical book lists of Rabelais, Swift, or Donne. And yet the era made its own singular contribution to the history of the phantom ... Read More...
Jonathan Law begins his exploration of that curiously enduring but little-discussed literary trope, the library of imaginary books... I knew it reminded me of something – that list of articles drummed out of Wikipedia for being too weird or dumb or just plain unhinged: in fact, a bunch of things I’ve read in ... Read More...